


Grounded

by tyndaridae



Category: Captain America (Comics)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-08
Updated: 2014-04-08
Packaged: 2018-01-18 16:08:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1434547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tyndaridae/pseuds/tyndaridae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which a very confused, very upset, very frightened Winter Soldier contemplates being Bucky Barnes and what that means for his future. Takes place shortly (immediately?) after Ed Brubaker’s 2005 Winter Soldier arc.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Grounded

Every couple of hours, he switched terminals. Jet Blue. American Airlines. Lufthansa. The seats along the windows were all uniform, black and poorly spaced; if he kept his cap pulled low and he crossed his ankles in front of him, the cameras couldn’t pick up his face. People mostly thought he was asleep, that way. Janitors swept around him, and mothers shushed their children as they walked by.

There used to be only one cord.

Every day, another plane. Every twenty minutes. The letters on the ticker flipped to update arrival times, cycling through the countries and adding new numbers to the board. At a self-service kiosk, a woman checked her boarding pass and groaned. An on time switched to a delayed. He tugged his jacket closer around his chest and dipped his fingers in his pocket.

They’d told him, when they’d given him the passport, that he wasn’t going to need it. There would be trouble, if he did — airport security draws the line at plates and screws, not limbs, and he’d never get his guns onboard. But everyone needs a contingency plan. We all have friends in the TSA. Out there, in the lobby, he pulled out the passport and thumbed through the pages again. It was all supposed to be fake: name, birthdate, United States. And it was, wasn’t it? Cap had called him something different than what they’d listed here.

Cap. That’s Captain America.

When they were kids, Bucky and his sister decided to run away. They made it off the base and into the woods before they got to the rapids — but he was prepared. He’d brought a rope from the flagpole. Look, see: he demonstrated proudly how she could cross if she tied one end ‘round her waist and let him hold the other once he made it over. By the time their father found them, the river had dragged her three miles. He held out his rope-burnt palms.

He didn’t know why he remembered that. He didn’t want to. Except he didn’t have a choice, anymore, and maybe he hadn’t ever had one, and every twenty minutes there was another plane he was supposed to be on, but he couldn’t go home because he didn’t know what his birthday was. Last time, they’d called it a fugue state amongst themselves. To him, they’d called it a lapse. It was a day’s questioning and then The Chair Again, the needle in his arm, the count backwards from ten. His skin like splintered plastic for the thaw.

There used to be only one cord. Here were the tugs at the other end: come out of the water, that’s enough now, it’s time to go. There used to be only one cord, but now he was idle in airports because now there were more, and Bucky wondered if Rebecca had felt torn between the river and the banks. His lungs were filling up. Yes. This was too much and too deep and he was barely wading.

He just didn’t want to taste like pennies anymore.


End file.
